Stories from Her Wife

did God make a mistake…?

In one of the comments, Tatyana asked a question that deserves its own blog post as an answer.

Do you think God make a mistake [in] creating Nicholas a man?

That’s one of those all-time great questions, isn’t it? It’s a great question for two reasons: because it contains at least two big important questions within itself, and because it cuts to the heart of the matter: In the world of PinkAndBlue, what exactly ARE transgendered folks? How do they fit in? DO they fit in, or are they an error to be erased, blotted out, expunged somehow?

Questions within questions

I suppose there are actually quite a few more than two questions-within-the-question here.

Is there a God?

Does God make mistakes?

Is transgenderism something God would be involved in?

Is transgenderism a mistake?

If it is a mistake, is it God’s mistake?

If transgenderism is not a mistake, then what is it?

If there is a God, and God doesn’t make mistakes, then what’s up with all these things that don’t follow The Rules in the world?

Did God create Nicholas, the man….or did God create Nicholas, the Melody-in-waiting, the chrysalis from which a woman would later emerge?

There is no way I can answer any of these questions authoritatively. I’m not a scholar, I’m not a priest, I’m no Guru on the Mount.

But I am Melody’s wife, so of course, I have my opinions on the matters above.

I reserve the right to skip around and address the questions out of order, to skip a question completely, and to end up with no satisfactory answers at all any time soon.

NUMBER 1: Is There A God?

This blogger answers: Yes.

Your answer may vary. If you have a different answer to this question, then your answers to all the other questions may vary from mine as well. There’s no judging on this blog, we’re all just stumbling along the road to eternity together. So play nice if you leave a comment. Thank you.

I am a God-person, in that I believe in God. Not the Old Bearded White Guy Sitting On A Cloud, but God. The God Who, rather than sitting on a cloud, IS the cloud, the cloud of knowing and unknowing, the dust of aeons, the ether from which and to which and in which we all are formed. The Ancient of Days…that sort of God.

NUMBER 3: Is Transgenderism Something God Would Be Involved In?

See what I did there? I skipped #2. I’ll go back, promise.

The God-as-I-Understand-God, if you will, would indeed be involved with transgender stuff. That’s because the God-as-I-Understand-God is involved with everything, at some point. For me, this is exactly what, or who, or where, God IS: The Being Who Is Involved In Everything At Some Point. God created, and then God stuck around to see what would happen with what She’d made. She didn’t take off on a long Vegas vacation, She didn’t hop on over to the next para-meta-omniverse to meet with Doctor Who, She created and then She stayed.

Since God created everything (in my opinion), then God is The Being Who Is Involved In Everything At Some Point including Transgender Stuff.

I am not, however, saying that God is involved with Microsoft products or bad plumbing. We can’t blame God for everything. We may be the children of God, but at some point, we have to step up and become the grown-up children of God. (Just sayin’.)

NUMBER 2: Does God Make Mistakes?

First, I want to know how many angels are dancing on the head of YOUR pin.

I believe God is an artist. We’re the artwork, trees are the artwork. Beagles and kittens, snow and fire, tachyons and sub-atomic particles named Strangeness and Charm, all of these are God’s artworks.

However, when you’re making art, you’re not working logically, from a laundry list of items:

Create electrons.

Create molecules.

Come up with periodic table of the elements.

Make a tapir.

In other words, I really doubt God was working from a checklist. The joy of creating leads to a certain flow of energy, a flow that can cause checklists and logic to dissolve in a frenzy of ecstatic Making.

Creating is fun. I say this from my own wee perspective as someone who might be called an artist: an artist with fiber, an artist with yarn, an artist with lace charts, an artist with beads, an artist with words. Besides being just about the best fun there is, creating is also the biggest act of trust anyone can perform…and I’m pretty sure that includes God’s creating, too.

God creates because that is God’s job, God’s vocation, God’s calling and love and passion. In fact: Just-try-to-stop-God-from-creating-I-dare-you. God creates because She must, because creating is His nature. (No reason to stick to a single gender pronoun for a being that is a cloud of knowing and unknowing, right?) And in the act of creation, God must trust Himself…mustn’t He? God must acknowledge, and then trust in, the range of Her abilities, the scope of which He is capable, the Potential nestled within the Self from which all things Become.

God, in my opinion, does not know doubt. God does not doubt Herself, Her creative process, nor Her creations. This means that God does not doubt US.

One of the most powerful conversations I ever had with a priest was this:

Me: “I’m not sure I believe in the Christ. I believe in God, I’m pretty sure I do, anyway.”

God believes in me. God believes in you. Just think about that for a while. Blows your circuits, it does.

Anyway, God believes in Himself and the works of Her hands. So, in the ultimate act of self-trust, God, in the process of creation, rolls up Her creative sleeves and just lets it all Rock And Roll. There is no self-judgment when God creates; God isn’t thinking, “Oh, this dolphin, this looks so awkward, these fins, are they a dumb idea? It’s supposed to be a mammal, and it looks like a fish.Will the archangels like it? And this platypus, I meant it to be a bit of whimsy, but I think I heard the cherubs giggling about it yesterday. Maybe this whole mammal that lays eggs and fish that has live babies vision I have is too, I don’t know, just too twee or something.”

Everything God makes is as it is: Awe-some. And God knows it.

There is no holy second-guessing, no godly self-criticism, no creatorly false starts. Thus: No Mistakes.

And if you think of what God does as Art: Every artist knows that there are no real mistakes in artwork; there are only inspirations that, if followed up on, can lead to wondrous new things. Self-criticism is anti-creation, it blocks the vision and the energy of making. Self-doubt causes creation to stop. Self-trust, the knowledge that what one creates is Good, this is the very source of love and life and new beginnings.

And with that, we have actually also answered:

NUMBER 5: If Transgenderism Is A Mistake, Is It God’s Mistake?

Nope. IF transgenderism is a mistake (and please note that I have not given my opinion on that one yet), then it is not God’s mistake…because God does not make mistakes.

Until next time…

That’s a lot of post to chew on, so methinks I’ll stop there for now. I’ll address the other stuff in another post, because I do think we’re only half-way to any sort of answer that I (for one) can live with.

Tatyana, I hope I’ve pretty much given you what my thoughts are regarding your basic question. This is big stuff; I think every question, well-asked, brings up more questions. Thank you so much for asking such an insightful, wonderful question.

Being human is complicated. God is not a simpleton; we used to say in the seventies that “God doesn’t make junk.” Nor, apparently, does God make simple IKEA stick-figures with instruction booklets.

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To extend those last two answers to their logical extremes… who that creates things has not been through this sequence? You have an idea. You give it form, crafting in whatever medium is appropriate. You stand back and consider the result. It may be lovely in its own right, but you may still find yourself looking at it and realizing that it isn’t quite what you intended, or not the full extent of what you intended. Or indeed that it has possibilities that hadn’t occurred to you until you began to see it take shape. So then you take it to the next level, and the next, and the next. That may mean changing the form; it may even mean translating it into a different medium – or mixing media to get the balance right. It generally implies a progression that could never have been foreseen at the outset, because the creation itself is a growing and evolving phenomenon, as the result of one stage informs the direction of the next. It’s about seeing over the next rise, embracing the unexpected in your own work. You don’t get to the final version until you’ve written the first draft, lived with it for a while, worked with it, studied it, focused it, refined it. And struggled some, along the way, to clarify the tricky bits and smooth the rough transitions.

That’s not mistake; it’s process.

No creative mind (even God’s?) is exempt from it, or would want to be, because that’s the glory of creating – not coincidentally the most God-like experience people can know.

Also – creation is hard, sometimes, for all parties involved. But it’s worth it. 😉

Transgender issues completely aside, this is a fantastic treatise on God and creativity. And I may make a pillow out of “Self-trust, the knowledge that what one creates is Good, this is the very source of love and life and new beginnings.” I think your self-trust (yes, you have it in spades, you really do) is what has always drawn me to your writing; even when you register your doubts, you have trusted that that’s the right thing to do. Inspiring.

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Dust Jacket

I'm Sandi, and my wife Melody is transgendered. The word "transgender" means different things to different folks. I use it to describe a person whose brain tells them they are one gender whilst their body tells the world they are the other gender.

Born a biological male, Melody thought of herself as a girl from a very young age. When she finally realized that she wasn't going to develop a girl's body and lose the "boy bits," she started down a road more common than one might think, the road towards being true to yourself when your body tells a different story entirely.

I married Melody when she was still living as a male; I knew that "he" was transgender but wasn't entirely sure what that meant.

These entries tell the story of our life together, how we are discovering what it really means to be yourself, what gender is (and can be), and how to navigate a gender change in a world that really would rather have everything permanently in pink or blue.